South African Foreign Minister taken to task by Free-Zim Youth UK
The Free-Zim Youth Movement, based in London, staged a protest against South African Foreign Minister, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, earlier this week. (The group is supported by other human rights activists, including Peter Tatchell who is well known among Zimbabweans for his repeated attempts to carry out arrests on Mugabe, gender activist and advocate Yvonne Marimo, and the African Liberation Support Campaign Network’s Tokumbo Oku).
SW Radio Africa describes the scene:
South Africa’s foreign affairs minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma had a night to forget in central London on Wednesday. Pressure group Free-Zim Youth UK made sure they expressed their displeasure with her government’s handling of the Zimbabwean crisis. Dr Zuma was addressing the London School of Economics on possible reforms for the United Nations following her country’s election to a non-permanent seat on the Security Council. The youths repeatedly disrupted her lecture with chants of “ANC betrays black Zimbabwe.”
Five minutes into Dr Zuma’s lecture Alois Mbawara who leads Free-Zim stood up to challenge her asking, “Why are you doing nothing to help Zimbabwe? The ANC called for solidarity against apartheid. But the ANC government is showing no solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe.” When asked by Howard Davies the chair of the meeting to keep quiet, Mr Mbawara replied, “We can’t keep quiet while Zimbabwe is suffering.” Stewards were called in to usher him outside.
Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell then walked onto the stage with a placard reading “Mbeki’s shame. ANC betrays black Zimbabwe.” Security officials wrestled Tatchell out of the venue only for another activist Wellington Chibanguza to stand up from the balcony shouting “Why do you (Dr Zuma) and your government persist with quiet diplomacy when it has failed to deliver?’ Chibanguza was also ejected from the meeting. Four women activists from the Free-Zim youth then started making catcalls during Dr Zuma’s speech resulting in their removal from the venue.
Zuma looked rattled and courted even more controversy by saying Zimbabweans were sitting in London doing nothing instead of taking matters into their own hands. She said ‘Zimbabweans in Britain have no right to speak out about the situation Zimbabwe.’ This did not go down well with the activists who pointed out that Dr Zuma herself had spent much of the apartheid era in exile in the United Kingdom. Tatchell said in a statement “Given the level of the audience disquiet, the organisers curtailed the promised question and answer session and Dr Zuma was humiliatingly smuggled out of a side exit to a waiting unmarked car. She scuttled away like a rat from a sinking ship.”
This follows on from a demonstration that Free-Zim Youth UK staged against the South African embassy earlier this month.
Mbawara, Wellington Chibanguza and other Free Zim Youths were dressed in military gear to symbolise an escalation in the fight for democracy in Zimbabwe.
The group marched carrying a mock coffin draped in a Zimbabwe flag, symbolising the victims of Operation Murambatsvina (many people died of exposure and deprivation as they had lost their means of making a living), victims of torture (many political opponents have been tortured including workers’ leaders) and victims of the Gukurahundi massacres which have been equated to ethnic cleansing.
The “coffin” was left at the SA embassy as an expression of their disappointment at SA President Thabo Mbeki’s failure to speak out against human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and failure to be an honest broker in the crisis. The youths also received solidity messages from The Young Communist League (YCL) of South Africa, Gabriel Shumba of Zim Exile SA, and the largest trade union umbrella body in South Africa, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)
Tokumbo Oku of the African Liberation Support Campaign Network called on all Africans to show international solidarity as was done to the African National Congress (ANC) during the apartheid era, because, far from being an African revolutionary, Mugabe and Zanu (PF) represented African dictatorship.
ALISC-Network is a democratic organisation supporting independent African organisations who are fighting oppression and tyranny in Africa, and who are fighting racism in the West.
And Yvonne Marimo highlighted the plight of Zimbabwean women and said South Africa women were letting down their Zimbabwean counterparts. “They should rise up and join us,” she said.
Free-Zim Youth UK promised then that this action was to be the start of many: “The next action will be even bigger, because we have the support, and we are going to spread the action to other Southern African Development Community embassies as well ” said Alois Mbawara in an interview with ChangeZimbabwe. Events this week indicate they plan to live up their word! We’ll be keeping an eye out for them.
If you’d like to ’shake their hand’, please send them an email them at freezim6@yahoo.co.uk
October 30th, 2006 21:20
[...] This is Zimbabwe chronicles the dressing down of South Africa’s foreign affairs minister by Zimbabwean democracy activists in London last week. [...]